[quote=patientrenter]
On one hand, I don’t think any human should be denied life saving healthcare just because they can’t pay.
On the other hand, there are only so many resources to go around, so we do need limitations…..[/quote]
“In its submission to the Romanow commission on the future of health care, the institute said that 30 to 50 per cent of total lifetime health care expenditures occur in the last six months of life.” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LVZ/is_8_17/ai_84895863/
“Total health care costs in the United States (U.S.) reached $989 billion in 1995 and now exceed $1 trillion, 14% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (1). Of this total, a disproportionate share is attributable to the care of elderly patients shortly before their deaths. According to Lubitz and Prihoda (2) and Lubitz and Riley (3), 6% of Medicare recipients 65 yr of age and older who died in 1978 and 1988 accounted for 28% of all costs of the Medicare program. In the same two years, 77% of the Medicare decedents’ expenditures occurred in the last year of life, 52% of them in the last 2 mo, and 40% in the last month. Inpatient expenses accounted for over 70% of the decedents’ total costs.” http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/165/6/750
There are alot of problems with health care. One of the biggest is just that we as people will do anything to avoid death. Usually assisted by doctors who have taken oaths and years of training to stop death at all costs.
What we end up with is a situtation where modern tech and medicine has outgrown our ethos about medicine. Decisions about what should be done are made by two groups, doctors who have made an oath to maximize life, and family members who are often in shock and pain and looking to avoid what is coming.
This same care is paid for by neither of these groups.
We need to find a better way of dying. Spending tens to hundreds of thousands for maybe days needs to change.
